Chapter 7 #2
“We’re Johnny’s family,” Mrs. Montgomery says. “We like you, dear. We all do.” Her eyes look moist, bless her heart.
Mr. Montgomery exhales loudly and drops his napkin onto the table as he stands. “Time to open another bottle of wine. Apologize to our guest, Olivia. Now, let’s talk about something less provocative, like politics.” He retreats to the kitchen.
Olivia’s chest is still heaving. Her eyes are fiery and fixed on mine.
If we were alone, I have no doubt that we would be tearing off each other’s clothes right now.
Or possibly she would be stabbing me in the face with her fork.
In any case, she would be all over me, doing something to me.
I’m horrified to admit that I would take whatever she gave me.
“It’s none of my business. You’re right,” I say quietly.
“I just want you to have a good life—that’s all.
” I don’t realize until I’ve said it out loud how true it is.
I suppose I should have started out by saying that.
One day, I’ll figure out these social niceties that people seem to put so much stock in. I’m sure I will. When I have time.
Olivia’s glare has softened. Her lower lip twitches.
Her shoulders hunch forward the slightest bit.
She pushes her long wavy hair behind her ear on the side that’s closest to me.
She so rarely wears her hair down. It makes her look more mature, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve felt tormented ever since I first saw her today.
“You don’t have to apologize,” she says. “I will have a good life. I mean, I’ll be working really hard, but that’s how I like it.” Her voice is soft and sweet and completely different from her usual tone when she’s engaged in conversation with me.
Now she’s only talking to me. Monty and his mom are now discussing football players.
“I understand where you’re coming from,” Olivia continues.
“Trust me. It’s just different in the performing arts.
I believe in following my bliss. I don’t question it.
I do care about my parents—that’s why I’m going to Pittsburgh.
So I can stay close and they won’t worry about me as much.
But this is the life I’ve chosen. I don’t care about job statistics.
I care about being the best dancer I can be. ”
“I understand,” I say. “I didn’t say it’s not admirable. I just don’t think it’s prudent.”
“I’m really sorry I said what I said about your family.”
She reaches out to me—to touch my arm, I suppose—just when I get up to go to the restroom again. As I stand, her fingers graze the bulge in my jeans. She jerks her hand away like she’s touched fire. And in a way—she has.
Monty and his mother aren’t paying any attention to us.
Olivia’s eyes lock on mine once she can tear them away from the protrusion of my impressive appendage.
She blushes. I don’t. I stare down at her and own it.
That’s right. I have a dick, and it’s hard.
I’m a young man who isn’t really a part of your family. Think about that.
She finally breaks our gaze, and I walk away from the table.
“Aw, dude,” Monty calls out. “You still having stomach issues?”
“No,” I say. “Just staying hydrated. Be right back.”
When I return from the guest bathroom, I can hear Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery in the kitchen, arguing about which bottle of wine to open. Monty and Olivia are alone at the dining table. I pause in the hallway when I overhear my name.
“I mean—don’t you have any other friends?” Olivia asks. I can hear her smiling. She’s teasing him. “Friends that aren’t socially challenged asshats, that is.”
“He isn’t an asshat. I mean, maybe a little.
But he’s the most loyal guy I know. If you don’t like him, then I don’t see why you’re constantly talking to him and about him.
It’s like you’re obsessed. You know what—if you paid more attention to guys like Johnny, maybe you wouldn’t come home crying to Mom because some asshole doesn’t treat you well. ”
“Okay, first of all, you and Mom talk about me way too much. It’s weird. Secondly, you’re saying you think Johnny B. treats me well?!”
“I didn’t say to date Johnny, obviously. I’m saying somebody more like him. But not him. And mostly totally different from him.”
I hear them laugh.
“You know what I mean,” my best friend says.
“Does he have a girlfriend?” She tries to keep her voice casual, but she doesn’t fool me.
“Not that I know of.”
“I mean…I could see how someone would find him attractive if he just took better care of himself.”
“You should definitely tell him that.” Monty laughs.
“Oh, I have.”
Yes. She has. Why does she always tell me that? How would I take better care of myself? What does that even mean? I’ll be graduating from MIT at the top of my class. How can I take better care of myself than that?
I spend the day after Thanksgiving working on an idea for a start-up.
All day. It’s the first idea I’ve had that might actually go somewhere.
Hours have passed, and I realize I haven’t eaten since dessert at the Montgomerys’ last night.
So I find a bag of Cheetos in the kitchen when I take a break to make more coffee.
Could this be what Olivia means when she says I should take better care of myself?
Is all this coffee and Doritos and Cheetos and Red Vines making me less attractive than I could be? I will look into this.
My mother has left a note on the nearly empty fridge that says,
Will try to remember to buy groceries on the way home. If you order pizza, please consider getting organic vegetarian. XX
Ever since my parents started investing in the food-tech industry, my mom has been trying to encourage my dad and me to go vegetarian, despite the fact that we’ve all always worked or studied such long hours that the main food groups we consume are Fast, Caffeinated, and Sugar.
When I feel a vibration in my pocket and see Monty’s caller ID on my phone, I feel more than a twinge of guilt. It’s not rational. I’ve done nothing wrong. Technically.
Before I can say hello, he says, “You filthy pervert.”
“Speaking.”
“You jacked it at my parents’ house, didn’t you?”
Shit. “How do you know it was me?”
“I found a crusty hand towel in the bush under the upstairs bathroom when I was taking the garbage can to the curb. I know for a fact that I didn’t blow my load into it. Are you implying that it was my dad’s spunk?”
“No. It was outside,” I say. “It could have been a neighbor. Or anyone visiting anyone in the neighborhood for Thanksgiving.”
“What is wrong with you? You aren’t twelve—you couldn’t wait until you got home? That hand towel was part of a set!”
“You also don’t know for a fact what the crusty substance was. It could have been gravy.”
“Dude.”
“You threw it away, right?” I ask.
“Yeah. The gravy-encrusted hand towel that you don’t know anything about was thrown away without my family knowing about it.
You just better not have been thinking about my sister,” Monty says.
“Surely there was some other female human you felt compelled to jerk off to during Thanksgiving dinner at my family home. Not my little sister, who happened to be wearing an inappropriately short skirt.”
“I…I don’t know what to say. Other than I was sexting with a girl named Jillian.”
This is not entirely untrue, as I did engage in sexually charged texting activities with Jillian several hours later once I’d returned here to my parents’ house.
Obviously, no one needs to know that even while I was sexting with Jillian, I was thinking of Monty’s younger sister.
Out of respect for her and her family, I imagined her as a twenty-year-old.
Watching her sensual twenty-year-old mouth feast on my cock.
Bending her over the Montgomery family dining table.
Begging me to stuff her harder. Playfully asking me to show her how they do it in college.
Moaning about how wrong she was about me while I came all over her twenty-year-old tits.
“Who is Jillian?”
Fuck. “Just a girl I met on Reddit.”
“Get out. Why haven’t you mentioned her before? Which subreddit?”
“MachineLearning.”
“Nice.”
“We aren’t dating or anything. She was back home, and she was bored. She’s a very good writer, so as you can imagine, her texts are stimulating.” I’m talking too much. He can probably tell I’m lying. “She’s really into Oxford commas, and she thinks Elon Musk is overrated.”
“That’s hot.”
“Yeah. I’m really embarrassed that I couldn’t wait, and I’m really sorry about the hand towel.”
He laughs. “You are full of surprises. Did she send pictures?”
“Affirmative.”
“Hot. But you gotta be careful with that, you know.”
“Oh, I am fully aware of the dangers and consequences of this situation,” I say. “But, you know, occasionally the brain is no longer in charge.”
“Even for you, huh?” he says. “Okay, well. I gotta go. You good?”
“Yes. You?”
“Yes. Talk later.”
“Talk later.”
That’s how we always end our calls.
It is highly unlikely that I will ever in my life make as close a friend as Monty.
Therefore, I cannot date or think about railing his only sister.
Anymore.
I just have to find someone like Olivia. But different. Or not different. Just not her.
Not anytime soon, obviously, because I’ll be busy with this start-up. Or some other start-up. But eventually. There will be a window of opportunity, and I will find someone like Olivia.